Estée Lauder Companies Packaging Innovation Associate Fellow

About Estée Lauder Companies

The Estée Lauder Companies is a global leader in prestige beauty, founded in 1946 by Estée and Joseph Lauder and built on an enduring belief in creativity, high-touch service, and entrepreneurial spirit. As an employer, the Group offers talent the scale of an international house with the energy of distinctive brands across skincare, makeup, fragrance, and hair care. Its culture values innovation, inclusion, learning, and responsible growth, inviting professionals to shape consumer experiences from laboratory to counter, digital platform to boardroom. Employees join a purpose-led organization where heritage, artistry, and scientific excellence meet to define the future of luxury beauty.

Role & Responsibilities

• Identify, develop, connect, and scale packaging technologies and capabilities that enable innovation across Estée Lauder Companies.
• Connect consumer needs, emerging trends, technical capabilities, and enterprise scale to create packaging solutions that can be leveraged across brands and categories.
• Translate consumer needs, emerging technologies, supplier capabilities, and internal engineering expertise into product-and-package systems, packaging platforms, technology engines, menu and stock packaging solutions, and shared cross-brand capabilities.
• Maintain visibility into technical work, equipment, engineering capabilities, pilots, trials, materials, manufacturing technologies, and emerging solutions at the Melville Technical Center and ELC manufacturing sites, connecting these capabilities to current and future brand needs.
• Champion digital and AI-enabled ways of working, applying AI to technical simulations, concept development, engineering problem-solving, knowledge management, and the automation or simplification of packaging development activities.
• Partner with Research & Innovation and the Packaging Inspiration Lab to identify emerging consumer needs and translate them into innovative product-and-package systems.
• Consider packaging as part of the complete product, formula, delivery system, and consumer experience.
• Connect consumer insights, emerging trends, competitive activity, materials, formats, dispensing technologies, application experiences, and product science to inspire packaging solutions.
• Collaborate with R&I, Product Development, Design, Packaging Development, Marketing, Consumer Insights, and other partners to translate early-stage ideas into technically viable concepts.
• Identify emerging technologies and packaging experiences that may create future opportunities across prestige beauty categories; build a forward-looking pipeline of packaging concepts, technologies, and systems; and bring external inspiration together with internal technical capabilities and business opportunities.
• Develop packaging technology engines and platforms that improve innovation capability, scale, efficiency, and speed to market across brands and categories.
• Create shared packaging solutions across brands while allowing appropriate differentiation in design, decoration, materials, consumer experience, and brand expression.
• Evolve ELC menu and stock packaging solutions to offer brands technically proven, commercially viable options for accelerated development.
• Establish scalable packaging architectures for multiple brands, categories, product forms, fill volumes, markets, and manufacturing locations.
• Identify opportunities to leverage common components, technologies, tooling strategies, manufacturing processes, and engineering knowledge across the enterprise.
• Create technical frameworks that let Packaging Development teams build on proven solutions rather than repeatedly developing similar technologies from the ground up.
• Balance platform scale with consumer experience, aesthetics, sustainability, technical performance, manufacturability, cost, and brand equity.
• Partner with Brand Packaging teams to transition platform technologies into brand-specific applications and commercial programs, maintaining a pipeline of scalable technologies at varying levels of technical readiness.
• Support Packaging Development teams in resolving complex technical and engineering challenges; consult on packaging architecture, materials, dispensing systems, component design, manufacturing technologies, assembly, decoration, testing, and commercialization.
• Lead or support advanced technical investigations when traditional development approaches have not produced an effective solution.
• Apply engineering principles, modeling, simulation, prototyping, testing, and experimentation to accelerate technical learning and decision-making.
• Identify opportunities to simplify packaging systems while improving robustness, consumer experience, manufacturability, sustainability, cost, and speed.
• Partner with Package Testing, Material Science, Quality, Manufacturing, R&I, suppliers, and other technical experts to develop and validate solutions.
• Develop technical knowledge, methodologies, design principles, and engineering guidance for Packaging Development teams across ELC; serve as a technical advisor and thought partner for high-complexity or high-value initiatives.
• Partner with Global Supplier Management and key suppliers to develop a pipeline of supplier-led packaging innovation.
• Build technical relationships with strategic suppliers, converters, equipment manufacturers, material innovators, startups, and technology partners.
• Maintain visibility into supplier technology roadmaps, manufacturing capabilities, emerging materials, dispensing technologies, decoration processes, and packaging formats.
• Challenge suppliers to advance technologies and capabilities aligned with ELC consumer, category, sustainability, and business priorities.
• Evaluate supplier innovations for technical readiness, differentiation, scalability, intellectual property considerations, manufacturing feasibility, and potential cross-brand application.
• Connect promising supplier innovations with appropriate ELC brands, R&I teams, Packaging Development teams, and business opportunities; collaborate with suppliers to further develop or customize technologies into differentiated or proprietary ELC capabilities where appropriate.
• Partner with GSM to establish mechanisms for sharing supplier innovation across Packaging Development.
• Maintain broad visibility into technical work and capabilities at the Melville Technical Center and across ELC manufacturing sites.
• Understand current and emerging Technical Center capabilities, including equipment, laboratories, pilot capabilities, prototyping, testing, engineering expertise, and ongoing technical initiatives.
• Build connectivity with ELC manufacturing sites to understand existing and emerging filling, assembly, decoration, automation, processing, inspection, and packaging capabilities.
• Connect underutilized or emerging internal capabilities with brand and category needs, and bring manufacturing knowledge into early innovation development so concepts account for scale and commercialization.
• Connect technical experts across sites and functions when capabilities developed in one area could solve challenges elsewhere, ensuring valuable knowledge and capabilities are leveraged broadly.
• Apply AI-enabled tools to packaging simulations, engineering analysis, concept generation, technical research, benchmarking, and problem-solving.
• Explore AI-supported modeling and simulation to evaluate packaging concepts and engineering scenarios earlier in development.
• Use AI to accelerate evaluation of design alternatives, materials, technical architectures, manufacturing approaches, and potential failure modes.
• Apply AI to technical documentation, specification analysis, data interpretation, knowledge retrieval, competitive analysis, supplier information, and engineering workflows.
• Establish responsible AI practices that keep engineering judgment, technical validation, confidentiality, and data integrity central to decision-making.
• Share successful AI use cases, prompts, workflows, methodologies, and lessons learned across Packaging Development, and continually evaluate emerging AI technologies for packaging engineering and innovation.
• Scout emerging packaging materials, dispensing technologies, manufacturing processes, automation, digital technologies, smart packaging, decoration techniques, refill systems, and other relevant innovations.
• Monitor adjacent industries for technologies that could be adapted to beauty packaging.
• Assess technologies for consumer relevance, technical feasibility, scalability, sustainability, cost, intellectual property, manufacturing readiness, and strategic value to ELC.
• Build prototypes, demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, or technical learning programs where appropriate, and make emerging capabilities visible to Brand Packaging teams for future innovation pipelines.
• Build trusted partnerships across Packaging Development, R&I, Packaging Inspiration Lab, Design, Product Development, Marketing, Consumer Insights, Manufacturing, Engineering, Quality, Material Science, Package Testing, Sustainability, GSM, and suppliers.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear opportunities, risks, and recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Connect teams solving similar problems independently and facilitate shared solutions.
• Influence technical and business decisions by balancing consumer desirability, technical feasibility, scalability, sustainability, investment, cost, and speed to market.
• Facilitate technical workshops, innovation sessions, supplier engagements, and cross-functional problem-solving.
• Mentor Packaging Development professionals and encourage experimentation, technical curiosity, knowledge sharing, and thoughtful risk-taking.
• Independently lead technical exploration and development within assigned areas of expertise; packaging technology and platform recommendations; technical feasibility assessments; engineering methodologies and technical recommendations; technology scouting and evaluation; technical knowledge development and sharing; AI-enabled packaging engineering use cases; identification of shared and scalable packaging opportunities; and technical connectivity across suppliers, Technical Centers, Manufacturing, R&I, and Packaging Development.
• Influence packaging innovation strategy, R&I packaging opportunities, category technology roadmaps, supplier innovation pipelines, manufacturing capability investments, menu and stock packaging strategy, shared cross-brand packaging platforms, engineering standards and methodologies, sustainability technology strategy, AI and digital engineering capability, and commercialization approaches for emerging technologies.
• Escalate significant technology investments, enterprise-level manufacturing or equipment investments, major intellectual property considerations, significant technical or commercialization risks, strategic supplier capability concerns, and technologies requiring substantial enterprise resources or cross-functional sponsorship.

Qualifications

• Minimum bachelor's degree in Packaging Science or Engineering.
• At least 7 years of experience in cosmetic package development.
• Concentrated experience in the prestige beauty industry, with proven development experience in color, fragrance, skin care, and promotional areas.
• Proficiency with Unique Package Definition Systems, MS Excel, Word, Outlook, and timeline management systems.

Skills

Experience

At least 7 years in cosmetic package development

Education

Minimum bachelor's degree in Packaging Science or Engineering

Workplace

Culture

The Estée Lauder Companies fosters a collaborative, inclusive workplace where creativity, entrepreneurial thinking, and a passion for prestige beauty are deeply valued. As a global house of distinctive brands, it offers employees an environment that encourages innovation, professional growth, and a shared commitment to excellence and consumer inspiration.

About Cerulean

Cerulean is the definitive career portal for the global luxury industry. We match exceptional professionals with exclusive opportunities at the world's most prestigious brands. From haute couture and fine watchmaking to prestige beauty, hospitality, and boutique retail, Cerulean centralises luxury employment to help you find the career for which you were destined.